This episode we have Christi- board member and Event Coordinator- as our first guest. She tells us about how she got involved with Motley Zoo and all the things she's been up to since. This is also the one where we finally get our own theme music thanks to Matt Setter and Sean Daily. You will laugh. You will cry...and you will wonder how we get anything done when the three of us are in a room together.
We had baby Helena (a blind Boston Terrier Roadie) in our sweatshirts, so you might hear her snoring!
This episode we have Christi- board member and Event Coordinator- as our first guest. She tells us about how she got involved with Motley Zoo and all the things she's been up to since. This is also the one where we finally get our own theme music thanks to Matt Setter and Sean Daily. You will laugh. You will cry...and you will wonder how we get anything done when the three of us are in a room together.
We had baby Helena (a blind Boston Terrier Roadie) in our sweatshirts, so you might hear her snoring!
This episode, we're going to be having our first guest, hopefully of many, many guests, and we are gonna be talking about our events with our Board member and Events Coordinator, Christi. Hey Christi. Hey Pate. Hey. Hey, Jme
jme:We're happy to have you here! I'm super happy to be here. So stoked you weirdos, eating mics with you is fun. Yeah, it's a little awkward because Christie and I are sharing a mic right now, so we'll get a new mic for guests in the future.
Pate:It's just me and Helena over here hogging my mic.
jme:Christi, you started about eight or so years ago, maybe nine now, and you initially came to us as an adopter. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got started with Motley Zoo? Okay. I think it was, it's going on 10 years maybe. But one day, I was looking at my Facebook messages and my friend Dana has sent me this picture of this adorable tiny little black puppy, that was pregnant and her name was PJ. And she looked exactly like the dog that I already had named Dudley. And she said, look, it's a little Dudley. And I said, oh my God, it's a little Dudley. And then I immediately became obsessed with this little puppy and her story. and the story was, Motley Zoo had taken her in from, I think Eastern Washington. She was like wandering around the streets pregnant. You guys are waiting for her puppies to be born at that point. So, there was a lot of, lot of posts about her pregnancy and, following her along and, I was watching like rapidly like, oh my gosh, I love this puppy. She had her three babies and followed that story. Sadly, she lost one of her babies. I guess she had a pretty difficult birth. Very difficult pregnancy. Yeah. Yeah. PJ's only six pounds. So I was like, stalking constantly. And like I swear the second that she showed up on Petfinder, I'm like, I wanna apply for her. I remember Pate telling me later, she's like, wow, I what? Like,"We thought we'd have this dog forever".
Pate:Yeah. Cuz she was, she was a tiny little chihuahua and the cool thing about her is that she has a mohawk, so she had this little mohawk and I could not for the life of me, as hard as I tried to capture that on camera, her tiny little mohawk just never showed up. And so, because we name animals after bands since I have a love for Pearl Jam, she was named Pearl Jam and the baby we lost was Ledbetter. So you kind of... Yeah, we embraced that. I think the story goes Pate and Jme, is that you wanted to do a meet and greet with Pearl Jam. Yes. Yes. Didn't, no. They disappointed you guys completely and we love them. Broke my heart, Eddie. No, I'm joking. But anyway, I applied for PJ and w as super excited to be approved to adopt her and, I'll tell you about her name in a second, but I have to tell you that when Pate walked in with her, we met at a Petco in Tacoma and she had this little dog with like nipples dragging on the floor. She looked brown, she had dandruff. I mean, she looked horrible and she was so skinny... Postpartum. And I'm like, is that the dog? I'm like, look at my daughter. And my husband like, is that the dog we applied for? Well, you know, is that, that doesn't, don't look like her and it was, and whatever fell in love, like immediately as they say. You know, it sounds pretty cliche, but it's true. But not only did I fall in love with PJ, but I fell in this weird sort of love with Pate because she was such a badass. She was such a hardass. Like, I'm like, okay, I think my life's goal from this moment on to make this woman laugh. And so for 10 years I've been trying to do that.
jme:I have a question though. Um, why, why was she dirty? Like...
Pate:No, it's postpartum. So when a dog is pregnant, and they do not come i nto our care in good circumstances, oftentimes, the mothers are depleted in just giving everything of themselves to their puppies. She was so tiny and she had three babies, and Corduroy was the biggest little monster. And then Crazy Mary, was just like her mother. And Ledbetter, Yellow Ledbetter was actually not yellow. He was black. So she had these three little babies and she was so thin herself. Pearl Jam, PJ, she was not in good condition. She already had dandruff and to get those nutrients into her body while she's giving so much to her babies. Christi adopted her almost the minute she was ready and she hadn't yet, you know, built up reserves, I guess.
jme:Well that sounds more realistic for us, because I was gonna say, we would never hand anybody a dirty, a dirty dog. So it's good to explain just a little bit about what really happens and why things might be that way.
Pate:Yeah. Dandruff flakes just don't show up on camera that well. Just like her mohawk. Exactly. No, she wasn't dirty. She was just, you know, like, yes. Depleted. Yeah. Very depleted. Like I mean, dry skin. Yeah. Anyway.
jme:Well, I'm glad that, even though you met Pate first that I know you have a deep love for me too, because I was wondering where I was involved and why you didn't love me the same. But, but now I know you just hadn't met me yet, so. Yeah, so, but once you met me, then it totally, that just solidified it. Just like having two children. You can love, you love them all the same. Exactly. I'm glad that you came to that event with Edward Carter, and I'm glad that you got involved. And, you know, being an art teacher, you were definitely thinking about how could you contribute, to this organization. And, why don't you tell us a little bit about the event that you came up with. Yeah. So as an art teacher, I was trying to figure out a way to become involved. So we invented an event called"Paint for Paws", and that is a fundraiser where, people could sign up to spend a couple hours with us at our studio. The studio is where we would do all of our training and daycare- not an art studio, but a dog studio. People would sign up to paint a portrait of their pet with us at our studio. I would be their guide. I developed a... Technique. Technique. Thank you. Mm-hmm. A technique of, you know, transferring a photo onto a canvas and for a$50 donation, you'd spend two to three hours. You could have some wine, have some crackers, cheese, whatever. And um, get to hang out with some cool people. Wine.
Pate:A lot of wine. Did I say wine?
jme:No, I You did say it, but I just wanted to emphasize Yeah, that was part of my fun. But it, anyway, became very, very successful. And you'd go home with a finished, awesome portrait of your pet and people would come in and say,"I don't know how to do it. I don't, you know, what do I do"? And I was always blown away at the end of every class, like how people's unique visions of their animals would come through. Because, you know, you're, you're unique, your animal's completely unique to you, and so is your art. And so we did that for a few years raised a bunch of money. I am always surprised too, how unique people's pieces turn out and how cool they are. And even when they think they don't have talent, they always went home happy. I don't think anybody was dissatisfied with what they came up with. And, you know, we included kids too. As long as they were gonna paint, they could come. And it was a very, very successful fundraiser for our organization. And I hope that we can find a facility where we can do that again sometime. Yeah, me too.
Pate:You came to Motley Zoo because you found PJ and then you kind of got sucked in by me, and...
jme:And me!
Pate:The vortex of Pate just sucked on in. But now you are in charge of all of our events. Mm-hmm. How did that happen? What made you wanna be Motley Zoo's Event Coordinator?
jme:Why did we give you authority?
Pate:We didn't. She just think she does. Yeah, exactly. It just kind of happened organically as everything does. When you get involved with something like this, you just see a need, some help that needs to be done. So, event coordinating just kind of fell in my lap, I guess. I mean, we were doing lots of fun things at that time. Of course I was really drawn to the music side of it because I'm a huge music fan. But I didn't dare like ever bring up being involved in any of that for years because I didn't feel worthy or I hadn't put in enough time, that type of thing.
jme:What was the first backstage meet and greet that you went to with us? I don't know. There's been so many It was probably, what's that winter... Deck the Hall Ball? With The End(107.7), maybe something like that. Or maybe it was Pain in the Grass. I don't really remember.
Pate:I miss Deck the Hall Ball. You, I do too. Yeah. That was fun. I know so much has changed.
jme:You actually said it right.
Pate:I was concentrating the ball hall. I know. I was like, oh, one second. I gotta pay attention to what I'm saying.
jme:Well, if you can't remember the first event that you went to with us, the band backstage Meet and Greets, what do you think is your favorite one or one of the most memorable or something you, you just really are never, ever, ever gonna forget? Hmm. That's a pretty, it's a hard one and an easy one cuz there have been so many good events. I loved last year's Pain in the Grass. That one was really fun. We got to spend some extra quality time with Alice in Chains and everyone in that band with puppies. But I think the hands on best one was Marymoor Park four or five years ago, when Billie Eilish was playing there. Pate and I had met Billie at Deck the Hall Ball actually the year before. And, she spent all the time she had with the puppies in that backstage room there, we had a puppy named Billie Eilish.
Pate:Mm-hmm. And a kitten named Ocean Eyes. Ocean Eyes, yeah. And she walked in and I just gave her Billie the puppy, and she was like, what? It was something that they'd never seen before, so it made a huge impression on her. And so she went off, did her set, and then came back and just hung out on the couch with puppies until they made her get on the bus and leave. So that was fun. So anyway, met her manager and then, I knew she was coming back to Marymoor, so I emailed him and said,"Hey dude, you know, we have puppies" and, Marymoor's such an amazing venue for doing something like this. And every time we go there, we love it. We've had some good experiences there, but it's got this, big mansion that the artists stay in. The green rooms are all these old rooms from the mansion and then there's this private lawn with a gazebo and, and just lots of lounge chairs and grass. So it's a really nice place to hang out. So they invited us to come and I had a litter of puppies at that point. They were Lucinda Williams puppies and there were five of them, I just showed up and, and it was a surprise for Billie, so we had'em all set up and she came out and was like,"Oh my God". So we spent the entire day there, just hanging out in the grass.
jme:And then I got a text from you because I was in New York and you said,"I'm hanging out with Eddie". Yeah. And I thought I knew what Eddie meant, but I had to clarify and I was like, Eddie, who? And sure enough, who was it? Well, it was PJ's names sake. The person PJ's named after the famous dog, PJ. Yeah, so Eddie Vedder was there with his daughter Olivia, who's a fan of Billie's. And so they came back for a meet and greet and just hung out for a couple hours with the puppies. Oh, I remember one of them took a nice biiiiig one right in front of Eddie, who's really cool about it. That's awesome. But that was a, that was a pretty memorable day. And it turns out that even the last we saw them again in March when they were in town and all the crew, everyone remembers that day, It was not only for us a great day, it was a great day for her whole family and crew. And she even put a page about it in her book. It was very sweet. And we're still in touch and we love her.
Pate:Yeah. And we saw her recently with our Matrix litter. And who ended up adopting Agent Smith? Oh yeah. Her, uh, PT Christina. She fell in love with her. It was like a year ago, almost to the day. Mm. Fell in love with this little puppy that day and wouldn't even leave the pen- just held her and held her. And so she had to finish her tour with Billie. So she came back in July and ended up adopting Agent Smith who is now Rocky Rockstar, little rockstar David Bowie, cuz it has one blue eye and one brown eye. And she lives in LA What? Schwetty balls.
jme:Okay. Christi, why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the other events that we do? We get requests for all sorts of things in the community for one, like Pumpkins in the Park in Kirkland. Usually around summertime, lots of outdoor things are happening and people, wanna have activities for kids or, you know, it's great exposure. So we try to do as many of those as we can to generate some public outreach. Another thing we always do in the summer is Yappy Hour with our friends over at Suite Lounge in Bellevue. And, we partner with Tito's on that one and Tito's is a great friend to us. They're very generous and we just show up at Yappy Hour with some puppies and they(Suite) have a really beautiful patio and we hang out and talk about what we do. These events are really fun to just meet the public and any of our volunteers are welcome to come share their experience. Whether they're fosters or adopters or they volunteer in our daycare and something like that. We do private puppy parties. We did a wedding. Yeah, like way out. I think it was like in Skagit Valley. It was really fun. We had puppies in kittens and the guests got to hold'em, and the wedding party did lots of pictures...
Pate:And I think they even actually came back and adopted from us. Did they? Mm-hmm. Wow. And then instead of a favor, they asked for donations. Or something like that instead of a, I don't know how it works, but they ended up, they hired us to be there and they raised money for us at their wedding at the same time. That was fun did a bridal shower, kind of the same thing. We do our music festival circuit every year. Our big one being Pain in the Grass out at White River Amphitheater with KISW. That one's really fun because we have a merch booth where we sell tons of merch. And people at Paint in the Grass look for us to be there every year, cause we actually have collectors that are like, okay,"What do you have new this year"? And... For our T-shirts? Yeah, for our t-shirts And new designs. And will buy'em for their kids, just, it's great. You know what the metal community is like, so supportive. We love them. And we also do backstage stuff there. We did a thing at the Museum of Museums, which is a really cool art museum in downtown Seattle, we brought some cats.
jme:That one was really cool because all the artists made different cat art. Cat Towers. It was called Cat Towers. Yeah. Yeah. And then we got to let the cats go and play on the cat towers at some point. So that was a really cool one and we're really grateful to them for that. Yeah. And they ended up auctioning off the cat towers and donated the money that was generated that to our rescue, which we're very grateful for. What else? Oh, corporate team building events. Those, we get requests for those. We'll come hang out for a couple hours with puppies and or kittens, and workers come in, take a break, play with some animals. We spread the word. You never know who's going to end up adopting from meeting an animal at one of these events. And so we like to get out there as much as possible. And I would like to say that the corporations make a donation. Everybody makes a donation to have us come there because while, yes, we are a charity, we're working for the animals. And so the animals, they, they do their thing and that helps us raise money for them. So it's very important that people understand that there's a relationship there and that the animals need that support and that we're happy to participate in your cool event, but we need to make sure that that's gonna support the animals that you're seeing. Exactly. It says on our contract, the people we work for free, the humans work for free. By the way, I'm a volunteer. My event planner, I'm a volunteer. I've. that's all volunteer. So the people work for free, but the animals really, really need your donation because they need care. And so yeah, when we do events like this, your donation really matters. This, next month we're working with Titos again at the end of Cocktail Week Saturday, April 1st. And they're actually setting up a little play area for us to bring some animals and be there for the duration of the day. And they're creating a signature"puptail" as well and, supporting us that way. So you can find us there. We're in the works with something fun at Bumbershoot this year, which they're bringing back for its 50th anniversary, so, we're hoping that you will see us there with some cats. It's top secret, but it's gonna be cool. We stopped recording and were talking behind the scenes for a minute and then...
Pate:Oh, we should that. Were you still recording? Because that would've been a good outtake. No, just, you know, we ever have bloopers, we ever have a blooper spiel? Mm-hmm. do you wanna listen to bloopers and Pate's annoying laugh? Just here, log on here.
jme:I realize that I don't really laugh that much.
Pate:That's cuz I'm doing it enough for both of us!
jme:I guess. But it's kind of sad. Don't leave recording this. You should. Yeah, I am. Oh, good.
Pate:No, but see, the thing is, is that you don't laugh loudly. I sneeze loudly and I laugh loudly.
jme:You're just loud.
Pate:I'm just fucking, yeah, I'm loud. I'm just f*&king loud. All right, so about laughter you. It's, canned laughter. I have a surprise for you. Oh, do you have canned laughter? I have a surprise for you and you might laugh. Are you ready for it? Mm-hmm. Are you ready for it?
jme:Yes. Are you ready for it? Okay, Taylor, five years later. Meanwhile, Helen has fallen asleep. Okay. Are you ready for it? I'm ready.*song plays* Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm crying now. I'm crying. That was amazing.
Pate:I was like sitting here going, that I know that song".
jme:That is so funny.
Pate:Oh my God. That was, that was a good, that was a good one. It's, it's a surprise you guys. Rock You Like a Hurricane. Yeah. My husband Matt and his good friend Sean Daily are the masterminds behind that song. We were talking about needing to spice up the podcast with some music. Yeah. We need a theme song and, some intros and outros. So here's another one for you.*song plays*
jme:That is awesome.*Cat Noises*
Pate:Sorry, Matt, we don't have any fucking cougars here. Well...
jme:We might, we might someday. Oh yeah, we are of that age, aren't we? All right. And, and then there's one more because, you know, podcasts they need, you need transitions. You need, you know, variety. So we can use any of these in upcoming stuff.*song plays* So I would've asked him to do one to Ironman. So that is really awesome. Really, because that's what I, yeah, because that used to be my ringtone until I lost it. That's awesome. I, okay. I love it. Thank you Matt and Sean. That's, that's a fucking amazing!
Pate:We need a lyric post... So you can hear it? Hmm. A lyric post? Uh. Okay. You know how like you look up lyrics for songs? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
jme:That's awesome.
Hey, Jme. Hey, Pate. Thanks for having me today. It's been really, really,
Pate:It's been real. Real, real here at MZ Studios. I had a blast and I can't wait till next time. This podcast is unique, you know, I looked it up on Spotify and it's the only one of its kind, nobody's doing this shit, so let's do it.
jme:We're doing rescue shit. That's what we're doing. We're really glad to have you. And I'm especially a glad because it's so rare that all three of us are in a room together. So, even if we can't do it, you know, all three of us together and we have the opportunity for people to call in, for you to call in if you can't make it. It's been enjoyable and we always have a good time together, so, um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. That's all the time we have for now. I'm Jme.
Pate:I'm Pate. I'm Christi.
jme:And we're from Motley Zoo and this is our podcast Rescue Shit.
Pate:Oh shit. Rock On. Rescue On, people.
jme:Word.